Search

Backup Crew

In About a Boy Marcus poignantly realizes that you can’t get through life on your own, or even with one more person in your gang. You needed backup. As I write to you, one year deep in my diss research, I have backup and then some. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the first pages of my dissertation. Maybe I can dream it into existence. I’ve already started drafting my dedication page and since the following players will most likely make the cut, I honor them here. Returning to Marcus, I do have backup. Lots of it, in the form of an external hard drive and Dropbox. I’m sure I could do better than this system, but it’s within my sphere of capabilities. I also make a duplicate of my Dropbox documents every month and store them on my desktop computer.

I am also deeply indebted to Apple Pages. I broke away from MS Office three years ago and have never looked back. I love Pages. It understands me and is a perfect co-pilot on this tedious, never-ending flight.

But perhaps the brightest star in my galaxy right now is Genius Scan. This is without a doubt the best $2.99 I’ve spent in a long time. Even though I still don’t have service on my iPhone the Recreo library has Wi-Fi and so the camera/Genius Scan combo is proving invaluable as I review books. Since I can’t check them out, scanning is my only option and I’m amassing an arsenal.

Marcus eventually grew up and went to college in California, thirty years into the past. Will I become a professor like Colin Firth in A Single Man, who knows? But Nicholas Hoult is firmly in my karass and I should consider adding him to my dedication page.